Judges: Chapter 16

When the internal tensions come crashing down

Rise and fall

on waves of passion

enwrap both sides

and bring it all down around you

                                                  
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The initial hint of redemptive promise embedded in Samson's marriage in Timnah has come to naught. Now there is no pretense of  relationship, as Samson baldly "meets a prostitute and sleeps with her." Yet even at this nadir, a new hint of redemption awakens: Samson sleeps only till "midnight", returning us to Gideon and his "midnight" battle. And when Samson carries the door with its two "sideposts" (mezuzot), we are carried back to an earlier midnight-- that fateful midnight of the Exodus, when the Israelites demarcated their boundaries by painting their sideposts with blood, so that God "passed over them."

And indeed in the next section, Samson "loves" for the first time--a change from the commodified, crudely sexual language used in his earlier encounter with women. Yet now, instead of buying women and their favors, it is Samson who is bought. Initially, Delilah sells him for silver, which the Philistine chieftains are careful to bring with them to the ambush. Yet as Delilah realizes that the wiley Samson has tricked her, the betrayal also becomes personal, a battle for power over this all-powerful man. "How can you be made helpless?" she asks him, again and again.

The answer is that fatal "love", along with Samson's permeable boundaries, the doorposts he never learned to demarcate. The physically strong Samson is internally weak, lacking staying power.  Just as when his wife coaxed out the answer to his riddle, he cannot withstand Delilah's questioning. Accusations, nagging, and his very "soul wishes to die." On some level, he wishes to be as helpless as he feels inside. Short bursts of intense power he can manage, yet cannot withstand sustained pressure--much as he was ready to die if God did not quench his thirst. 

And die he will. For this time it is not a riddle he reveals, but the source of his strength. In a scene of strange and terrifying tenderness, Delilah realizes that he has revealed "his whole heart", making himself utterly vulnerable. In a dark echo of Jael, she takes on a quasi-maternal role,  lulling him to sleep on her lap. When he is somnolent and infantilized, she calls in the Philistines to strip him of his strength. 

The degradation of Samson alludes to several episodes in his life, a kind of back window view of his downfall. Where once he chose a woman "who was right in his eyes" he is now reduced to an eyeless spectacle to be watched. After sauntering into Azza to sleep with a whore, he is now returned to Azza "to play" for his enemies.  Samson's final moments highlight the leitmotif of duality that has defined him from the moment his birth was announced, his death set into place before his conception. Strength and weakness; rough and sweet. He is the lion, riven in two; the twinned foxes running terrified of the fire burning between them. Where once he carried the gate and its two sideposts, balancing both sides, now he prays to be avenged of only "one of my two eyes." Symbolically, he wraps himself around both supporting beams, crushing them together, his duality finally forced to singularity, bringing the temple down.

Let my soul die with the Philistines, he prays. The saga ends chiastically, as Samson is collected by his brethren, and carried back to the Dannite lands between Tzorah and Eshtaol where his story began. And yet despite this return, Samson remains entwined and defined by the Philistines--the nation he married, loved, and hated; the nation with whom he died. Yes, he is buried with his father Manoach, but does he truly return?